“The ambulance will be here in a minute. I’ll be right over there with the other victim.”
She walked back to the staircase where Cindy was reclining against the stone wall, breathing normally. Her bleeding had stopped. Thank goodness.
Claire wrapped her in a big, comforting hug, saying, “Richie is on his way.”
Cindy smiled and said, “Oh, good.” But then her face crumpled and she started to cry. Claire hugged her friend more tightly and then pulled back to look into her face. Cindy’s sobs had turned into laughter that was now verging on hysteria.
“What’s going on, Cindy?”
“I’m just overwhelmed,” Cindy admitted. “What if you hadn’t found me here? Who knows what would have happened to me.”
“I know, Cindy, I know,” Claire murmured, patting Cindy’s back some more.
But then Cindy shook her head and put on her tough face. She wiped her tears and said, “How is it that I missed all the action? Can you tell me that?”
“You’re alive, dummy,” Claire said. “Could you just be happy that you’re alive?”
Their playful exchange was interrupted by a woman’s voice that said, “Claire?”
It was Joan. She was walking down the steps, looking cute and unconcerned. It was almost as if she had a new role in a movie and had just walked out onto the set, thinking she could wing her lines.
“Wait, is that Cindy next to you?” she asked.
Cindy said, “Claire, help me up.”
“Stay where you are, sweetie. It’s better if you sit still until the paramedics arrive. Unlike me, they have medical equipment and will be able to check you out properly.”
Joan said, “Cindy, what happened to you?”
“A man up there tried to shoot me. I ducked, but then I also tripped and fell down these steps. It was silly, really. Claire says I’m going to live.”
Joan groaned and said, “Oh, that freaking Peter. He’s a maniac.” She sat down next to Cindy and took her hand.
She turned her head up to look at Claire and said, “I wanted to tell you that those gunshots jogged a memory. Sam Alton. I remember him now.”
With those words, she instantly had Claire and Cindy’s avid attention.
“I guess you could say he was my boyfriend. We didn’t use our real names with each other. I called him Butchie. He called me Princess. We kept each other company from time to time, but it wasn’t love between us. Our relationship came out of pure and simple need, on both of our parts.” She cleared her throat and sighed, saying, “Still. He was very kind and he didn’t deserve to die. I’m so very sorry that he’s dead. I never saw who shot him, but I know that Peter has to have been involved. I wish I had seen Butchie’s killer. I wish I knew how it happened.”
Sirens wailed, amped up, and stopped as an ambulance drove up to the service gate at the bottom of the steps.
Joan and Claire both stood up.
There were the sounds of panel doors slamming and voices shouting. Claire ran down to the driveway and helped the team by opening the gate for them so they could carry a stretcher through.
“Hurry,” she yelled. “We need you up here.”
CHAPTER 29
INSPECTOR RICHARD CONKLIN was conducting a bedside interview at St. Francis Memorial Hospital for the second time this week. But this time, it was more than that. This interview was an official interrogation.
Peter Carter had gone through surgery, had cleared the recovery room, and was now settled in his private room. Hours earlier, his surgeon had pronounced him in stable condition.
Conklin had arrested Carter for his attempt on Joan Murphy’s life. If the force was with Conklin, the dangerous fool in the hospital bed was going to admit to being part of a conspiracy to murder Joan Murphy—twice—as well as the plan to murder Joan’s friend and proven lover, Sam Alton.
Right now, Peter Carter was in a talkative mood. His hand was cuffed to his bed rail. His eyes were closed, and the sheets were pulled up under his arms. His leg was in a cast and in traction. Prior to this interview, Conklin learned that this man was a person who couldn’t shoot straight without his glasses. To Conklin, Peter Carter looked like an ordinary and even pleasant man.
“Feeling okay to talk?” Conklin asked.
“Only if you promise not to judge me,” the man said.
“I’m not like that,” said Conklin. “I just want to clear up a few things. Before we start, though, I want to make sure you understand your rights.”
“Okay. I told you already. I understand them.”
“Fine. And I’m going to keep recording our conversation on my phone.” He showed the phone to Carter, then set it down on the tray table.
Carter said he understood his rights and Conklin believed him. He also believed that Carter was desperate to be understood and forgiven so that he could return to something like life as he had known it.
But that wasn’t going to happen.
Conklin said, “I want to start in the middle, Peter. Look, you should know that Arthur O’Brien is dead. He overdosed in his apartment.”
“No way. Are you shitting me?”
“Sorry. I know he was a friend. We have his cell phone and have the phone records. He called you many times while you two planned the hit on Joan at the Warwick. What I don’t know is how it all went wrong.”
Carter sighed. “Damn it. I told him to always call my prepaid phone. I guess I didn’t realize that he’d called me on my cell.”
At Carter’s words, Conklin silently congratulated himself. He hadn’t been positively sure of the connection between these two men until this minute. Thanks for confirming the conspiracy, bud.
He said, “People can get rattled. Sometimes they make mistakes when they’re doing something they’re not used to doing, right?”
Carter agreed. He said, “Artie was an old school friend. I knew I could trust him. He needed the money. He isn’t, you know, a professional.”
“Sure. We get that. So he was supposed to kill Joan and keep the jewelry, right? But why kill her? Help me to understand.”
“I didn’t have a choice. Robert doesn’t love Joan. He’s told me so many times that he loves me, but I know he’ll never leave her. I thought if she just happened to die while she was on a date with someone else, he’d be a free man. He’d own the house and we …”
Carter trailed off. Conklin didn’t want him to fall asleep. Not now. “Peter. Peter, I’m still here.”
CHAPTER 30
CONKLIN REACHED OVER and shook Peter Carter’s arm, keeping him awake before he slipped into a post-operative slumber.
His eyes opened. “Oh. It’s you. What was I saying?”
“You were saying that you got Arthur to kill Joan?”
“Well, yeah. Better him than me. I wanted to have a clean conscience. A clean enough conscience, anyway. I mean, if I didn’t actually shoot her …”
He winced from pain, looked at the water glass on the tray table. Conklin handed it to Carter and watched while he drank, sputtered, then handed the glass back to Conklin.
Conklin asked, “And what about Samuel Alton? Was killing him in the original plan?”
Carter nodded.
“That’s yes?”
“Yes. It wasn’t anything personal. He was just collateral damage. It had to be done.”
“I see. I understand all that. You had to kill the witness, right?”
Carter nodded, winced, and then closed his eyes.
Conklin said, “Peter. Is that a yes?”
“Yes. For God’s sake, are you thick? I think it’s time for me to take a nap. Where’s Robert?”
Conklin didn’t want to answer that one. Because Robert Murphy was a material witness, Conklin’s team had him in lockup. Sac and Linden were questioning him, but charges had not yet been brought to the table.
Meanwhile, Conklin pressed on with his interrogation. “Peter, Robert will be in to see you later. I’m sure of it. But for now, we have to finish here. Understa
nd?”
“Go ahead, then,” Carter said. “I’m in a lot of pain, man. Let’s get this over with.”
“Good,” said Conklin. “Two more minutes. That’s all.”
Peter asked, “What was the question?”
“The key card,” Conklin said. “We have the key card to Joan’s hotel room. It was in Artie’s possession. How on earth did Artie get that?”
“Right,” said Carter. “That was easy. I went to the Warwick. I paid off the guy at the front desk and told him I just wanted to take pictures. I showed him my camera, and I said, ‘One picture is worth a thousand buckaroos.’ I didn’t have to ask twice. The guy made me a key and even put on this big show of welcoming me to the Warwick. Ha!
“Then I handed that key card off to my buddy Artie. An hour later, he calls and tells me that he’d done the job and that it had gone off perfectly. He was in and out in three minutes. It was such a relief. I figured that after that call, it was all over, except for the funeral, of course. But then, Joan comes home with gunshot wounds. She walks. She talks. She seems to be just about as good as new.”
“Huh,” said Rich. “That must have been a shock for you.”
Carter went on. “She completely wrecked it, man. Everything I’d worked so hard to coordinate. Hey, what’s your name again?”
“Conklin. Inspector Richard Conklin.”
Carter waved his hand as if Conklin’s name was unimportant, after all. He was into his story, though. He wanted to complain.
“The whole situation between me and Robert worked for two years—but then all of a sudden, Joan wouldn’t allow it anymore. Like, who gave her the right to say whether the relationship between me and my boyfriend is okay or not? Look, if you really want to know who was behind all this, it was Joan herself. She was the one who started it. She should have left us alone. Okay? Are we done now?”
Conklin knew it was now or maybe never again. The answer to this question was critical.
“So, Peter, you’re saying that Robert had knowledge of this plan to kill Joan?”
“No, no. I didn’t tell him about that. You gotta be kidding me. She caused it, but it was my plan all along. I figured with Joan out of the way, Robert and I could be happy. I never wanted him to know what I’d done to Joan. Correction, tried to do to her. Honest to God, that’s the whole truth. Robert had absolutely no part in it.”
“Okay,” said Conklin. “I believe you.”
“What happens next?” Peter asked.
“Get some sleep. And then you’ll want to get a good lawyer.”
“Call Robert, will you?”
“Sure.”
Peter Carter had relaxed back into a dopey, angelic postoperative doze when Conklin said, “Take care.”
Then he left the room with the taped confession in his pocket and said good night to the two officers on guard outside the door.
CHAPTER 31
CINDY WAS IN an excellent mood.
Her editor, Henry Tyler, had been so happy with “A Miraculous Life.” It was her first-person account of Joan Murphy’s ordeal. In fact, Henry had liked the article so much that he’d ceremoniously presented her with a little statuette from the fifties that he kept in his office called the Smith Corona. The bone-china figurine depicted a high-stepping young woman in a business suit who wore a typewriter as a hat.
“This, Cindy, this is how I think of you.”
She’d laughed and thrown her arms around Henry. She told him that getting the Smith Corona was better than getting an Oscar. And it was. She surrounded the statuette with a forest of candlesticks on the sideboard.
In a couple of hours, she and Rich were having a special dinner in their small, ground-floor apartment to welcome home Lindsay and Joe, who had just returned from their vacation yesterday.
They decided to make the theme of the party “Thanksgiving dinner,” because the meal was so good that they didn’t want to wait until November to enjoy it. In preparation for their version of turkey day, Cindy had asked Claire to bring cranberry sauce, a vegetable side, and stuffing. Rich had stepped up to make his Thanksgiving specialty of the house since childhood: a yam casserole with marshmallows on top.
Brady had said, “Do not worry about wine. I will take care of the alcohol course, trust me.” And Yuki had added, “I can bring garlands with popcorn and cranberries. Believe it or not, I think I saw some of them out at the market this week. Even though it isn’t November, we have to make it look festive.”
The meal was going to be excellent.
Cindy had roasted the turkey, basting it properly, leaving enough time for the meat to cool before her guests arrived. Richie made his yams and set up the table in the dining room, adding in the extensions they’d never used before.
They had finally gotten the table ready for everyone when the doorbell rang.
Claire and Edmund arrived first, carrying covered dishes. After Rich hung up their coats, they went into the kitchen to help Cindy and warm up their hot side. Claire had an exquisite talent with a carving knife, and as she dissected the turkey, she explained each and every one of her cuts. It sent Cindy into fits of laughter.
Yuki and Brady showed up with wine and the promised garlands, and Brady hoisted Yuki up so that she could tack the garlands to the ceiling and string them across the tops of bookcases. He spun her around a couple of times, and she scissored her legs as if she were a ballerina. Everyone enjoyed the spectacle.
When the doorbell rang again, Cindy opened the door.
Lindsay, Joe, and Julie came through the doorway. Lindsay held up three boxes and said, “I hope triple-chocolate cake is okay. We have a couple of pies for everyone, too. It’s all store-bought though. I’m still in vacation mode.”
“Cake and pie,” Cindy gushed, and she took the treats from her friend. “That’s fantastic.”
A shout went up when the Molinari family entered the living room. “Yay! The gang’s all here.”
Everyone hugged Lindsay, Joe, and Julie. Even though it had only been a week, it somehow felt like more time had passed.
Brady opened wine bottles and poured glasses for the adults, while Cindy got a cup of milk for Julie. She asked the toddler if she was she glad to be home and smiled when Julie nodded emphatically.
Rich assembled eight assorted chairs in the living room and passed around the nuts and a cheese platter. While everyone munched on their snacks, they caught up and told stories and jokes.
After appetizers, everyone moved into the dining room. Once they were all settled around the table, with Julie sitting next to Joe on a kitchen stool, Edmund thanked God for their good health and wonderful friendships.
After the amens, Brady suggested they all go around the table and say what they’re thankful for, as if it were actually Thanksgiving. Everyone thought it was a great idea. He went first and said, “I’m thankful to be married to Yuki and for knowin’ all a y’all. I swear to God.”
Joe popped into the kitchen and came back with the turkey. He set it on the table. “It’s trite but true,” he said, “that I am glad for this big turkey.”
Edmund said, “Cindy, I am thankful you got Claire to make her chestnut stuffing because we haven’t had it in about five years.”
Claire laughed and said, “That’s not true.” Then she followed up her protestations by saying, “I’m thankful for you, too, Edmund, and for ‘all a y’all,’” which got a long round of laughter from the group.
When the laughing finally subsided, Claire added, “And I’m really happy that my folks sent me to medical school. Look where it got me. Bon appétit, everyone.”
It was a short reach across the table for all to clink glasses, which they did.
Lindsay said, “I’m thankful to Cindy for taking care of Martha while I was away and for putting together this wonderful Thanksgiving dinner. It was such a good idea to celebrate with a turkey. But I’m also wondering what I’ve missed. Did anything happen? At all?”
Conklin said, “Nah. Nothing.”<
br />
“Not much,” said Cindy. But then she leaned in closer to Lindsay and added, “We were just on the juiciest case ever.”
“Are you kidding me?” said Lindsay.
“Well,” said Cindy, “It was in the top ten, anyway.”
And Claire said, “It was definitely a murder case for the ages.”
EPILOGUE
CLAIRE WAS THE first to open Joan’s handwritten invitation for holiday drinks with her new friends, saying it was a “surprise” venue that was for “girls only.”
Claire called Cindy, Lindsay, and Yuki, and they were all in.
A driver picked them each up from their offices and drove them out to the Pier 39 Marina at Fisherman’s Wharf. The car was a Bentley, and Cindy immediately located the champagne in an ice bucket in the backseat of the car, which made the ride merry and bright.
After a short while, the driver delivered the Women’s Murder Club to a slip of land, where Joan and Marjorie were waiting for them. Joan was bundled up in charcoal cashmere and had her mother’s large diamond pendant around her neck.
The night was cool, but it wasn’t cold, and the sky was clear, providing a beautiful backdrop for the marina. There were at least three hundred double-fingered boat slips docked along the pier, and the women took in incredible views of Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge.
Joan embraced each of her guests, including Lindsay, whom she’d never met. “I’ve heard so much about you,” she said, giving her shoulders an extra squeeze.
“I’ve heard a bit about you, too,” Lindsay said.
They laughed and hugged again.
A gorgeous motor yacht pulled up in front of them. It was a seventy-two-foot cabin cruiser with a long, open bridge and old-fashioned brass lights hung along the teakwood trim. The captain’s name was Gina Marie, and she looked impeccable in her white uniform and red lipstick. She gave each of them a wide smile as she welcomed them aboard.
Lindsay and Cindy cast off the lines, and Gina Marie started up the engine. Then the guests went down to the lounge, where Marjorie served champagne and hors d’oeuvres. She sat next to Joan when everyone was served and joined the festivities. But the question still lingered: what was the occasion?
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